Giving a glimpse of our future with the bioeconomy at the GBS 2020
In the course of roughly eight months, we see more and more the valuable role of the bioeconomy as part of Europe’s post-COVID-19 economic recovery plan. As its leaders seek to make it sustainable, policies at national and regional levels are challenged at different levels. The BioMonitor project will have an immense presence in this year’s Global Bioeconomy Summit (GBS) as partners showcase the work being done to let stakeholders-at-large see the impact of the bioeconomy beyond the data being shown today. The vision of the Global Bioeconomy Summit is to let government officials, scientific experts, business leaders, and other change-makers from all over the world seek out together the different pathways for the bioeconomy to contribute to sustainable development. This year the event is to be held virtually for a week. Three days (16-18 November) are dedicated to a series of workshops while two days (19-20 November) are dedicated to plenary sessions. The BioMonitor project will be participating in the following sessions during the GBS: • November 18, 9:00-10:00 CET, Parallel Session in cooperation with the International Consortium on Applied Bioeconomy (ICABR) on “How to implement bioeconomy strategies around the globe: Learning from success (Part 1)” • November 18, 16:00-18:00 CET, Plenary Session on “International policy instruments and governance of the bioeconomy and circular economy” These will be represented by colleagues from the Wageningen University and Research and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EU-JRC). They will look into the different bioeconomy strategies and the governance needs or gaps that need to be implemented and addressed respectively. During the GBS, they will also be premiering our project video during our sessions. It illustrates the challenges the BioMonitor project seeks to address by briefly answering the questions commonly asked by stakeholders. Watch the video here. Moreover, the BioMonitor project’s efforts will be shown on November 18, 16:00-19:00 CET in a plenary session on “Rebooting the economy – sustainability, growth, and climate action delivered by the bioeconomy”. Elisabetta Balzi (EU-JRC) will be presenting the European Bioeconomy Monitoring System, a work in which the BioMonitor project contributed to selecting indicators for the monitoring of the EU Bioeconomy strategy’s 5th objective. Other than building a robust data and modelling framework that will measure the impacts of the bioeconomy including its sustainability level, the BioMonitor project will be presenting future scenarios. All these efforts will allow policy makers and business leaders make sound science and evidence-based decisions to make the bioeconomy and the bio-based sectors sustainable in the long-run.
Keywords
bioeconomy, recovery plan, sustainable development, bio-based sector